I was shocked to read today that climate change may be dropped from the national curriculum. As a teacher in various state schools for 20 years, I've seen how much the education on this issue has really improved in the past decade and how everyone has benefited from it being a prescribed part of the curriculum.

Pupils are really motivated to learn about climate change. I've seen this first-hand. At my school, in common with many others, there's been a drive to help pupils make links between the various subjects around the issue of the environment and, obviously, climate change has played a big part in that. As an English and media teacher, I've read articles with my classes about how climate change is making the poorest people in the world suffer from droughts and flooding. I've seen just how animated pupils become when they've debated the issues. Furthermore, I've become aware that they've learned a great deal about the problem in science and geography – and have enjoyed it. One normally disaffected student, fired up by what she was reading, told me that learning things in school "made sense" to her. "It's like I see what education's all about," she told me. It was a real eureka moment for her.

Following on from this point, pupils have definitely benefited from applying theory to practical examples. The most obvious instance of this is in science, where pupils learn the theory and science of the greenhouse effect and then examine real-life examples. One geography teacher told me today, outraged about the government's plans, that this is the thing that makes many children learn most effectively: they need to see the relevance of a particular academic knowledge before it sinks in. Learning about climate change has enabled students to see the "holistic" nature of knowledge; they've been able to join the dots between the various subject disciplines.

Third, and most importantly, climate change is one of the most pressing problems facing us today. We must educate the next generation properly about it so that they are able to take the action that's needed. Our whole future is at stake here; it would be a tragedy to drop climate change from the national curriculum.

"Dear parents," says the letter that always arrives two days after a school inset day, making my heart sink. "Staff had an immensely instructive day earlier this week at our training day. We looked at (here insert almost any of-the-moment topic you can think of, ranging from emotional IQ to an innovative way of teaching reading, to a new way of combating climate change), and we are all enormously enthusiastic about what we have learned.

"Classes over the coming weeks will be tailored to pass on our new-found obsession, and we will also be holding special parents' sessions so that you, too, can be taken through every nuance in the hope that you will be able to pass on even more information on this topic to your children at home."

This isn't the exact wording, of course, but you get the point. We are living through what has to be the faddiest moment in educational history: never before has the teaching of children revolved so conspicuously and unashamedly around what is contemporary, what is judged of-the-moment. And the impression I have formed, over 15 years of having children in both primary and secondary schools (I have four children ranging from nine to 19) is that too much of the content of today's lessons is determined by the obsession of the times.

What is happening at the moment is that contemporary concerns such as climate change are being incorporated into the very fabric of the syllabus. By all means pepper lessons with topical issues, but these should not be allowed to dominate.

Education, after all, has always been guided by the thread of learning that stretches back through centuries, and which will taper on for many more centuries into the future. Climate change matters, of course: if it isn't dealt with, teachers won't be teaching anything in a few generations. But children at school need the skills to deal with any number of planet-threatening problems, rather than homing in on one threat that is currently in the headlines. The curriculum needs to look to the past; that way, it will (as it always has done) manage to equip for the future.